Responding to Celeb Photo Leaks, Reddit Scotches "Fappening" Subreddit 307
4chan might have introduced a DMCA policy, but Reddit goes farther: VentureBeat reports that the online community known as The Fappening has been dissolved by Reddit, in response to its use in posting and sharing many of the photos leaked from dozens of celebrities.
This isn’t the first time Reddit has decided to take action to ban certain questionable communities from its site, as its previously killed other subreddits like Creepshots for similar invasions of privacy as well as banned well-known power users shown to enable such actions. ... Reddit system admin Jason Harvey (aka “alienth”) attempted to cool some of the fuss by starting that discussion about why the company decided to ban the subreddit. Most of it boils down to Reddit waiting too long to speak up about it before making the decision to ban, while assuming its users would mostly understand why it took place. ... “If Reddit is truly to be a platform that’s open in any way, it needs transparency when (heavy handed) actions such as these are taken,” said Reddit user SaidTheCanadian in response to Harvey, while also suggesting the company create a “public log” of sorts showing all banning actions as well as explanations for each instance of a banned community. “I don’t want to be part of a community where community voices are silenced without meaningful notice or explanation. (No one really does like that secret police feeling.)”
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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From the link below...
Yishan Wong, the chief executive officer of Reddit, has tried to explain why the site has not banned certain subreddits (sections of the website where users share items connected to a specific topic) despite banning the subreddit which contained the stolen pictures of nude celebrities.
In a Reddit thread under the title “Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul” [sic], Mr Wong wrote: “I did not say ‘we won’t ban any subreddits ever’. I said that we don’t ban subreddits for being morally bad. We do ban subreddits for breaking our rules, and one of them is repeatedly and primarily being a place where people post copyrighted material for which valid DMCA requests are being received.”
Essentially, the company refuses to ban subreddits for being “morally bad” but will if they break any laws or any of the website’s own rules.
http://i100.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
This seems just a little disingenuous, considering the content of some subreddits that still exist. For instance:
Racism
There are hundreds of subreddits that are racist in tone and content. Many use the N-word in their titles or draw comparisons between black people and apes. One discusses the riots in Ferguson, which it describes as “ChimpOut 2014”. In another subreddit, users share video clips and images of black men who are either dead or about to die, usually in violent circumstances. Des
Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Basically, they treat Reddit like DNS. Setting up a subreddit is like registering a domain name. What that domain name is used for is up to the owner. I'm sure if you asked registrars, they wouldn't feel obliged to be the moral police for people who use their services either.
Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned... (Score:5, Informative)
Regardless of your opinion on celebrities, taking nude photos of yourself, cloud storage, porn, or hacking, this is pretty clearly a copyright violation. The copyright on the photos belong to the celebrities who took them, and they have sole, exclusive control over distribution in any country which is a signatory to the Berne Copyright Convention [wikipedia.org]. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to register a copyright for a work to be copyrighted. Any copyrightable work you create is automatically copyrighted. The only thing registering does is raise the damage ceiling in a lawsuit (without registration you can only collect damages suffered; with registration the limit is $200,000 per infringed work). So Reddit may have been premature in quashing the subreddit before they got a DMCA notice, but it was inevitable they were going to get one and they would've had to quash it anyway.
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Essentially, the company refuses to ban subreddits for being âoemorally badâ but will if they break any laws or any of the websiteâ(TM)s own rules.
Bullshit. Take a look at the number of subreddits that were launched on the first day when the zoe quinn and then was followed up by the mass topic deletions in gaming subreddits, which was then followed up by corruption in gaming subreddits. And you'll see that half a dozen to a dozen subreddits were outright banned because ... well no one knows. Admins simply banned them, there was no doxxing, there was no harassment in them. They were discussing the issues at hand...and bomf...deleted.
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"In a Reddit thread under the title “Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul” [sic], Mr Wong wrote: “I did not say ‘we won’t ban any subreddits ever’. I said that we don’t ban subreddits for being morally bad."
Mr. Wong, with all due respect (that's not much for the record). Horse. Fucking. Shit.
If you make a rule against X (and ban X-related subreddits) but not rules against Y and Z, you're making a moral statement that Y and Z are more acceptable than X.
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"almost as much as a Saudi prince does in their own country" - NOT ......EVEN.....CLOSE
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I think the point he was making, a well-trodden point, is that wealthy / famous people have more privileges, including legal privileges, than normals. From the bizarre amount of attention this has gotten you'd think this was new and shocking ("What?! Pornography?! On the internet?!?!") as opposed to an everyday occurrence.
It's certainly a valid point, and it's important to keep bringing it up when something like this happens, but it is
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SRS is awesome, and making fun of racists and sexist knuckledraggers is a pretty important service to the community. If we cant make klansman womenbeaters leave of their own voltiion, then maybe reddit isn't actually banning enough.
Heres a better proposal: Give SRS mods global admin rights.
Stop taking risky pics (Score:2)
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If I walk to the bad part of town and that I know is the bad part of town and something bad happens to me yes, I am partially to blame because I should have known to avoid that spot (if I knew it was thebad part of town)
the internet as a whole, = the bad part of town, dont do things you dont want public on them
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if you put yourself in a bad situation, and you know it is a bad situation, you share some of the blame. it really is that simple basil.
If you leave your car running with the windows down in front of a bodega, and you come outside and its gone, you share responsibility in your car being stolen.
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as to your wallet claim, no, if you get mugged for your wallet thats not your fault. however if you have a bankerbag full of 100 grand and you walk through downtown harlem at 3 AM with it on your shoulder and you get mugged, I cant say I really feel sorry for you
you call me naive, yet you are the one who does not understand something as simple as varying degrees of risk
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I have no problem with probability. Risk is simply probability attached to a bad outcome. I understand it very well. But unlike you I differentiate it from responsibility. The word risk is confusing you.
You have a serious problem with logic - try telling your insurance that, yes, even though you left your car in a rough part of town, overnight, with the keys in the ignition and all the windows rolled down, that they have to pay up because "it's 100% the criminals fault". The insurance company understands risks much better than you, and thus I'm inclined (and just about every other human out there, barring SJW's) to follow their logic much better than I follow your non-logic.
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I suppose you don't mean to imply that the fact he was there because of his job makes any difference? Would you shift the blame in other circumstances? Or am I misunderstanding you?
I wonder where the victim blaming comes from; I admit it's often my first thought until just a moment later a more rational part of the brain catches up and tells me I'm being unfair and wrong. Luckily I don't open my mouth in between.
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Speck in the tip of the iceberg (Score:2)
All this fuss... (Score:5, Insightful)
All this fuss, because the victims were famous. If someone posted naked pictures of any of us on the internet, the police would laugh at us. Would the FBI get involved? Would subreddits get deleted? Hell no... If there's any great tragedy in this whole mess, it's that it highlights the class divide in this country. If you're famous, you get more rights than the rest of us.
Thousands of people have their nude photos leaked to the net every day. Reddits FULL of them. Suddenly now it's a big deal. I've no sympathy for these people, not because it's their fault, but because this is just a small dose of what it's like to be normal. Cry me a river.
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If someone posted naked pictures of any of us on the internet, the police would laugh at us.
If you want to stop the police from laughing at you, have your lawyer contact them instead of calling them yourself.
Some of the models were underage (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I've been reading, some of the models were under 18 when the photos were taken, which makes those photos child pornography. Hosting, linking to, uploading, distributing, possessing, or downloading those particular pics is illegal. "Child pornography" is a whole other level of illegality to "stolen pics," with much heavier penalties.
As far as the argument that "Nobody cares until it happens to a celebrity," sometimes a famous case that happens to a celebrity is what people need to get them to start caring about an issue. A lot of people started caring more about AIDS once Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury died. Nobody really knew what ALS was until Lou Gehrig got it, and it ended his baseball career and then his life. While the events themselves are regrettable, I think it's great that this has started a dialog about stolen pics and revenge porn. Look, there are plenty of people who willingly place themselves on display. Why fap/shlik it to stuff that was posted nonconsensually?
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As far as the argument that "Nobody cares until it happens to a celebrity," sometimes a famous case that happens to a celebrity is what people need to get them to start caring about an issue. A lot of people started caring more about AIDS once Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury died. Nobody really knew what ALS was until Lou Gehrig got it, and it ended his baseball career and then his life.
In the past, the press was the only way of distributing news widely, and celebrities were the only ones who got press coverage. Depending on your definition of 'celebrity', I suspect the Internet has changed that. Consider oh, I don't know, Tardar Sauce [facebook.com] -- if he got a disease while he was still well-known, everybody in the world would know about it. A couple hyperlinks away is a detailed description of the disease, and you soon have worldwide visibility and education on what was otherwise a local concern
Don't really care (Score:2)
If the person who coined 'fappening' comes to San Diego and drops me a line, you get 1 free beer.
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Don't care how many celebrities got their nude selfies exposed, nor various websites' responses, nor that at least 1 celebretard was underage when she took her pix.
If the person who coined 'fappening' comes to San Diego and drops me a line, you get 1 free beer.
That one that might of been underage when the pic was taken, claimed that it wasn't a picture of her. So if that is not a pic of her, and thus could not of been when she was under 18, how is that child pornography?
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Because people lie?
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How about telling those celeb sluts to stop taking naughty selfies, or at least not uploading them all to The Cloud (tm)?
Puritanical American blaming the victims. It's the same argument as telling rape victims they shouldn't have worn short skirts.
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No, it's the same argument as telling people that if you want something to remain private and within your control, don't stick it on the internet. Believe it or not, you can be *both* the victim of something *and* an idiot for not taking better precautions to protect yourself from being the victim of it.
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Is it wrong to cite the bad choices that a rape victim may have made, in a specific circumstance, like getting blackout-drunk in a semi-private party while surrounded by people that the victim might not know very well, when the nature gathering itself has helped whip up those in attendance into a higher state of sexual interest?
In that kind of circumstance the rapist is 100% at fault for his actions, but that doesn't me
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In that kind of circumstance the rapist is 100% at fault for his actions, but that doesn't mean that one can't cite additional responsibility on the part of those that took away their own self-control.
"Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing. And you've already allocated 100% of the "at fault" to the rapist. So there's a logical fault there.
There's nothing wrong with advice to people about what ways they can minimise risk. But the time for that is before the crime, and the people to do that to are people that are in danger. Raising it after the crime, amongst a group of people who are not renowned for having photogenic bodies, reveals that it is just reducing the blame alloc
Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
Then when is the appropriate time to raise it?
After that hacking incidents in 2012 when Blake Lively, Scarlett Johansson, and other actresses found their private naked pictures redistributed?
How about when Vanessa Hudgens' photos and Hayley Williams' photos were redistributed before that?
How about when Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian had video of them having sex released prior to that?
Be they technological faults or human failings that led to the information getting out, there's an established pattern that large portions of the public want to see this stuff, and that some who are motivated will go through significant amounts of effort to make it happen. If it exists it's at risk of being exposed. The only certain way to prevent it from being released is to not create it in the first place. The only close-to-acceptable way to create it and not have it be at risk is to not use a digital means.
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How about at a time when you are not attaching it to a particular victim or victims, in order to allocate blame to them.
The only close-to-acceptable way to create it and not have it be at risk is to not use a digital means.
The only close to acceptable way to protect yourself from being mugged is not to carry any money or valuables. Do you carry them?
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And to reply to this, since I forgot to in my previous reply, if you know a part of town at a particular time of day is known for muggings and you go there during that time of day and get mugged, then you bear some responsibility for not using that grey matter between your ears to evaluate and minimize risks to yourself. So yes, you are to blame if you knowing
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Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
"Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing. And you've already allocated 100% of the "at fault" to the rapist.
No it does not.
You are conflating responsibility, blame and fault into one and single thing. Which is not the case.
That is why a statutory rape charge is not a possible charge if both persons who are engaged in consensual sex are adults.
Responsibility means that one is responsible for one's own actions.
And yes, if one's actions endanger others they ARE responsible for the results of those actions.
Like someone going out to sea in a storm, falling overboard and causing millions in damage to haul their ass out of the water.
The fault is not implied in one's responsibility, but in the results of their actions for which they are responsible.
In the case of pictures and reddit and the deletes, celebrities have a responsibility to act like responsible adults.
Responsible adults don't leave their naked pictures online. Period.
BUT!
The burden of their fault there is suffered solely by their reputation and their "good name".
Which is why they are making demands on account of this being "a copyright issue" and not something else, like invasion of privacy.
The responsibility for breaking into their accounts and taking and sharing those photos on the other hand belongs solely to those who did the breaking in/stealing/sharing.
And so does the fault. For every one of those acts.
The responsibility for them being ABLE to do that rests on the host service which the celebrities in this case were using.
Same as the responsibility of reddit for providing their users with tools and ability to share those images.
After all, if there was no responsibility there, celebs would have no one to ask to pull down those photos, but the people who actively share them on reddit.
And, we are back to celebs and their responsibility for demanding that reddit removes those images - causing reddit to remove entire subreddits, thus encroaching on freedom of speech of EVERYONE using those subreddits.
More responsibility and more fault for both.
There are various responsibilities, various faults and none of them are a zero sum game.
Some are a matter for the legal courts to determine the blame, some are judged in the court of public opinion, some will not be judged at all.
But there is plenty of responsibility and fault to go around.
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"Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing. And you've already allocated 100% of the "at fault" to the rapist. So there's a logical fault there.
[snipped]
You know it would be less risky if I didn't carry cash in my wallet. But that doesn't make me even slightly responsible or to blame if I get mugged.
How the hell did this get modded insightful? No one is victim blaming - if a girl gets blackout-drunk at a private party with people she doesn't know very well then she isn't guilty of being raped, she's guilty of being stupid. The rapist still get's 100% "at fault" for rape. The victim get's $SOME% "at fault" for being stupid.
You're making a silly claim - that people should be absolved of all responsibility even when they take risks. Sorry, no. While the criminal is still 100% to be blamed for the crime,
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Is it wrong to cite the bad choices that a rape victim may have made, in a specific circumstance, like getting blackout-drunk in a semi-private party while surrounded by people that the victim might not know very well, when the nature gathering itself has helped whip up those in attendance into a higher state of sexual interest?
A rapist is a rapist. A rapist might make a decision which victim to choose and the actual victim acting differently might have made the rapist choose a different victim, but it was the rapist's decision to rape. And what kind of sicko wants sex with a "blackout-drunk" woman? If that's what you want, why not invest in a blow-up doll?
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Compare to this current debate. If naked pictures are being stolen from technology that is beyond the understanding and control of the user, don't take naked pictures with technology that's beyond the understanding and control of the user.
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Is it wrong to cite the bad choices that a rape victim may have made, in a specific circumstance, like getting blackout-drunk in a semi-private party while surrounded by people that the victim might not know very well, when the nature gathering itself has helped whip up those in attendance into a higher state of sexual interest?
I think it's definitely wrong when talking to or about a specific victim. They feel horrible enough already.
On the other hand, such talk probably has a useful place in rape (or violence in general) prevention education, for example. The advice can do good only when given in advance.
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That's exactly the point that I, and others who feel the same as I do, are trying to make. There's nothing we can do for the current crop of victims. What we can do is to point out how bloody stupid their actions were, and
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If your goal is to prevent someone you love from getting into that situation, recommending that they not wear a short skirt and walk through a bad part of the city at night wouldnt be "blaming the victim". It would be pointing out that there are unwise things you can do that are liable to get you into trouble.
Blame isnt this binary thing where only one person can have done something wrong. If I walk through the Bronx in expensive close flashing a wallet full of money, I havent done anything illegal or wro
Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Uploading nude selfies to the cloud is stupid and naive.
It's not like they actively did so. It's simply an online backup, which is enabled when setting up the phone. You can opt out, but of course backing up is the recommended action. And quite rightly so. There is more chance of people being harmed by losing all the photos of the kids when a phone dies than there is of the account being hacked and photos being taken.
Consider also that the technicalities of a backup are beyond most non-technical consumers. Which is the group most people, including celebrities, fall in to.
Again, blaming the victims is just wrong.
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Uploading nude selfies to the cloud is stupid and naive.
[...]
Again, blaming the victims is just wrong.
I would not call it "stupid and naive", but perhaps "imprudent" for people (and celebrities in particular) to (a) have these types of photos, and (b) have them uploaded anywhere. The main problem is (a) though.
And saying that that it was unwise to create these types of photos (especially if you're famous) is not blaming them.
None of these celebrities did anything wrong, and none of them probably deserved for this to happen for them. But they did increase their risks. At least for me, that is what I mean by
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It's not like they actively did so. It's simply an online backup
An online backup tool - that they willingly installed - did the transfer. Anyone that uses such programs should really keep in mind what such a program does.
Granted, cloud-backup providers are acting irresponsibly in failing to express the risks of using their system.
blaming the victims is just wrong
Indeed, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to say the victims failed to take sensible basic steps to protect themselves.
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We are talking about victims of crime here, not victims of accidents.
Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:5, Informative)
False equivalence. Minus 50 points for slytherin.
It's more like blaming somebody who was killed in a car accident that was somebody else's fault after they chose to wear their seatbelt, but design flaw they weren't aware of made it ineffective.
Close... but no cigar. (Score:2)
It's more like blaming somebody who was killed in a car accident that was somebody else's fault after they chose to wear their seatbelt, but design flaw they weren't aware of made it ineffective.
It's the "I don't need a seat belt, the car has airbags." situation.
And then the victim sues the manufacturer of the car driven by the driver who caused the accident.
So the manufacturer silently recalls all those cars (they were distributed to drivers for free, in exchange for watching commercials) and melts them into slag.
Along with anything that the drivers may have left inside.
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Consider also that the technicalities of a backup are beyond most non-technical consumers. Which is the group most people, including celebrities, fall in to.
They wouldn't be if the phone wasn't a deliberately arcane restricted POS.
Because some other type of phone would require you to understand the technicalities of a backup? Sounds like the kind of phone most non-technical consumers wouldn't use.
Or because, with some other type of phone, the technicalities of a backup would be simple enough for non-technical consumers to use?
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Coincidentally, 100% of all people who write "100% sum game" have no clue about what that phrase could mean if it had any meaning at all, 90% of all people who write "zero sum game" know absolutely nothing about game theory, and 89% of all statistics are made up ad hoc.
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Wrong-think.
If nude photos aren't protected, how about a law firm's documents in a $138 million dollar lawsuit?
How about military secrets?
How about your bank account?
Dumfucks like you miss the point entirely.
The Internet is broken. The answer isn't to quit using it, as you suggest ... the answer is to fix it.
It will be fixed eventually, but certainly not by dumfucks like you.
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I'm a dreamer too, but absolutely secure yet seamlessly usable remote storage seems as likely as peace on Earth and goodwill towards everyone.
Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
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Stealing is wrong no matter the context.
Except when it applies to a Law Enforcement Backdoor, [wired.com] right? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear... right?
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Making copies is not stealing.
setting aside matters of law (in which copying IS stealing in some contexts whether you think it's right or wrong)... from an ethical perspective, I would say that hacking into someone's private account and downloading their shizz is stealing.
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in which copying IS stealing in some contexts whether you think it's right or wrong
No, it's not.
It's copyright infringement.
Unless you're talking about trade secrets.
Which is again not stealing. It might be trademark or patent infringement though.
Calling any of that stealing is like calling drawing blood, or any other easily renewable bodily fluid, murder.
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Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
How about grasping that I can do with my body whatever I want. Upload my photoes where ever I want.
But you may not download, upload my photos anywhere! You shall not hack my account! Regardless if it is my private PC at home or my cloud storage!
What about telling those people who get shot every year not to stand in front of a killer wiht a gun?
What about telling everyone who get mugged or rubbed not to have a $600 iPhone with him, or a $2000 laptop or not $1000 in cash. It is all their fault if they get deprived from their 'property'!??
You attitude likely comes from your desire to see the nude pics of those women yourself ...
Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Your last sentence is pretty close to an ad hominem. The GP post is probably a troll. So why I'm posting here is beyond me. Maybe I'm bored.
Here's the thing. It's true that in a perfect world, you should have complete control of what happens to the stuff you post, just like you should have complete control over what happens to your body.
This isn't, unfortunately a perfect world.
Protecting yourself is a virtue, not a vice. And giving advice on how to protect yourself is not necessarily "blaming the victim".
Let me put it another way: to use some analogies that have been put forth in other comments, if there is a place in town where someone gets raped every single night, maybe two or three people, and you deliberately going to that place at night, alone... do you really think it's going to do any good to just tell whomever you encounter "don't rape me?"
When it would never have happened if you'd just not gone?
Protect yourself. Don't do stupid stuff. At the end of the day, you do have *some* control over your circumstances. Don't give up that control just because someone else does something stupid too.
Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
I completely disagree with you. Particularly the last sentence, which, again, is coming close to an ad hominem. I didn't make that argument and I wasn't going to.
I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud. I figure if I do that I'm just asking for whatever happens. And that is the way *I* look at it when it comes to my own business, so I won't listen to anyone telling me I'm wrong.
I'm done here. One can never win this kind of argument because there is never any rationality to it. It's all emotional.
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I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud.
check your fly; your participle is dangling.
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I completely disagree with you. Particularly the last sentence, which, again, is coming close to an ad hominem. I didn't make that argument and I wasn't going to.
I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud. I figure if I do that I'm just asking for whatever happens. And that is the way *I* look at it when it comes to my own business, so I won't listen to anyone telling me I'm wrong.
I'm done here. One can never win this kind of argument because there is never any rationality to it. It's all emotional.
Back in the depths of the medieval period (the early 1990s), when the large (Fortune 50) company I worked for first connected its user base to the Internet, they gave a piece of advice about emails, which, IMHO, applies in spades to any online storage (whenever someone says "the cloud" you should always mentally replace it with "someone else's servers") or site. It went something like this: "don't put anything in an email [replace that with 'online' for today's environment] that you wouldn't want to see on
Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud. I figure if I do that I'm just asking for whatever happens.
Then I hope you backup your phone locally, and realise that if you have a house fire you may lose all your photos and other data.
Uh, GP didn't say he never uploaded photos to iCloud. He said he does NOT upload photos he doesn't "want distributed widely" to iCloud.
Basically, it's a good piece of advice generally: if you have very sensitive data that you'd like to keep private (whether it's financial data, passwords, nudie photos, whatever), it's probably best to keep your own control over that data. Devices that are attached the internet and which randomly transmit your data to other computers there are NOT guaranteed to be secure.
Which if you are a parent with photos of the kids would be adding one tragedy to another.
The ONLY place you have your photos of your kids is on your phone and on iCloud? I have electronic copies of photos I care about shared via a syncing utility (not based on commercial servers or services) on at least four different computers, with at least two different computers in different locations running backups daily.
There is not the slightest bit of emotion in my argument. It's perfectly rational. The criminal is 100% responsible for the crimes they chose to commit. And thus there in no percentage points available for allocating to the victim.
I probably shouldn't get involved in this discussion either, but I'm pretty sure that GP is NOT placing any blame on the victim, especially since he explicitly said that.
In case you've never thought about this, it is in fact possible for a number of factors to be preconditions to a criminal act without all of them being "responsible" for the criminal act. (You might consider reading some philosophy on the nature of causality here.)
Or, to take this to a less controversial topic, let's say that I observe that you keep arriving at work on rainy days with your clothes soaked. I carry an umbrella in my bag every day, just in case.
If I told you that I found things worked out better for me in terms of not having wet clothes when I get to work by carrying an umbrella with me, would you conclude that I've "allocated responsibility" for the weather to you? Of course not! That's preposterous. The weather is the weather, and you're not somehow "responsible" for causing the rain if it rains on you and soaks your clothes.
But carrying an umbrella might help. Suggesting that you could carry an umbrella is not "blaming the victim" of the rain -- it's pointing out that reasonable precautions can sometimes help to avoid bad situations.
I know that if I were a famous actress or something, and I knew that nude photos of me would be desireable by some sick hackers out there, I'd take extra precautions. That's not "blaming the victim." That's recognizing that evil people are in the world, and that's crap, and those evil people are 100% to blame for their stupid actions... but sometimes it's a rainy day, so preparation could help. I frankly feel very bad for those women whose privacy was violated here -- and I think it's really, REALLY important to talk about how to prevent such things in the future, which includes education about how to perhaps avoid dealing with these bad guys in the first place.
I absolutely get why the OP who started this thread sounded offensive by saying this was "overblown" or something. I do NOT get why you feel the need to attack someone (GP) who is talking about reasonable precautions to take to avoid being taken advantage of evil people in the world. In an ideal world, those evil people wouldn't exist... and I could let my doors open at night, post my financial passwords and data on a public website, and store my stash of cash on my front porch. But we all recognize that bad people will take advantage of situations like that. We all take precautions. Observing what sort of precautions might be helpful in certain circumstances is not "blaming the victim."
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There is not the slightest bit of emotion in my argument. It's perfectly rational. The criminal is 100% responsible for the crimes they chose to commit. And thus there in no percentage points available for allocating to the victim.
There is nothing rational in your argument. We can (and do, as a matter of fact) call the criminal 100% guilty of the crime and call the victim $X% guilty of stupidity. This in no way endorses the crime, as you seem to think, especially in the case of rape.
Re:Bah humbug censorship (Score:5, Funny)
What about telling those people who get shot every year not to stand in front of a killer wiht a gun?
Quite frankly - if someone is getting shot every year, I would have no problem telling him he's probably not making the best choices.
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What about telling those people who get shot every year not to stand in front of a killer wiht a gun?
Quite frankly - if someone is getting shot every year, I would have no problem telling him he's probably not making the best choices.
at the very least if they survive annual attacks it's hard to keep calling the attacker a killer
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Maybe the victim is a cat.
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Quite frankly - if someone is getting shot every year, I would have no problem telling him he's probably not making the best choices.
Yes, yes, I know, but it is difficult to find a job when I'm not in the country entirely legally, and have a wife and eight children to feed. Nevertheless, I do very much appreciate your concern and advice.
-- Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
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Unfortunately, you live in the real world where your laptop is going to be stolen out of your car if you leave it visible on the front passenger seat while you go shopping in the mall. The thief is responsible for committing the crime and you didn't deserve to be the victim of that crime, but you *are* responsible for the circumstances which made it possible by not taking reasonable precautions like keeping your laptop out of site (or out of your car entirely).
Passwords, door locks, security systems, and sa
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I agree with the moral bit, but what about insurance? My stolen bike wouldn't have been covered if I hadn't presented all three keys as rudimentary proof that the bike was locked. (The key wouldn't come out while the lock was open.)
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Are you ready to take responsibility for the next real world victims who might have been willing to protect themselves despite it not being their responsibility in happy ideological lala-land, but who didn't know how to or weren't even aware of the danger because your knee-jerk "victim blame" reaction suppressed that information and finally managed to alienate the last one who would have been willing to help?
On a slightly (un)related note, on some website there recently were some very vocal habitual "Victim
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Indeed. This is not zero-sum. Just because a bad actor does something reprehensible does not mean that there is not an opportunity for education on how to reduce your risk. Don't crack. And don't put yourself in a situation where it's likely you will *be* cracked.
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Kill yourself.
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Instilling shame is not helping my wife and me in trying to give them other goals in life because shame is the one thing that heightens sexual connotation.
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I don't think there's anything wrong with being a slut either. I do think making promises of faithfulness to one's partner(s) and then breaking them is wrong (mutually renegotiating the rules is fine of course).
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Don't show your white ass in the ghetto if you're allergic to fists, blades or bullets.
Racist much?
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It's called being a realist, you moron. Reality isn't always pretty, or politically correct.
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*sigh* No, not racist. Not blaming the rape victim. Not justifying smart phone theft. Not telling people it's OK to take advantage of idiots. Not even telling you not to bungee-jump or not to go and provoke people where you're less than welcome. I am telling you to be aware of the risks you're taking and to make sure you can handle if the risks materialize. I am telling you that my attitude towards the criminal doesn't depend on your stupidity, but my empathy towards you depends on the risks you took and for what reason you took them.
So. Not a bigoted jerk? You just play one on /., eh? Fair enough. Carry on.
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You seem to have a propensity to call people with whom you disagree names instead of arguing your case. A joke comes to mind: Woman dancing with her date: "Do you like to dance?" Man: "Yes, very!" Woman: "Then why don't you learn how?"
I don't necessarily disagree with OP's general point. It is important to be aware of your surroundings, and it is a good idea to keep your personal safety in mind -- unless you have a personal bodyguard, no one else will. However, I did take exception to OP's bigoted comment ("Don't show your white ass in the ghetto if you're allergic to fists, blades or bullets."), so I called him/her on it. No hidden agenda or ad hominem at all. If OP doesn't want to be considered a bigoted jerk, a good start would b
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Nowhere did I suggest that people be IT professionals, as it's not about the cloud nor any other intricate technicality, but I simply stated that you should flat out not create documents of any sort that can be damaging to your image, if that image is important to you. Someone hacking your account, someone stealing your phone or laptop,
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What next, articles analyzing the artistic merit of the average 4chan post?
Since most 4chan posts are done for neither fame, nor money, I would argue that they are the only true form of art.
*ducks*
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4chan: Art for Fuck's sake.
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... After 3 to 6 attempts, your account requires additional authentication to login. You automatically get sent to Iforgot.apple.com for all new requests.
It wasn't a brute force attack nor was it recently patched unless you think 'years ago' is recent.
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... because using a password that anyone can guess means it was guessed by brute force? Thats what you're saying, right?
Show the proof it was brute force, not silly speculation. The account lockout procedure has been in place for several years across the board. Its not something they just added last week.
Re:please (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it was a brute force attack. Apples now trying to cover it up by claiming "If only you had a better password." Which may be true, if their passwords had been 50 characters long it would have taken the brute force attack a lot long to complete. But the fact of the matter is, Apple forgot to put in an X number of wrong attempts = account locked, procedure in... or it wasn't working properly and people exploited it.
In cryptography, a brute-force attack means that you don't know anything about the password, but just try all the billions of possibilities. Assuming that a password character can only be a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and 10 other characters, and assuming that a password has exactly 6 characters, you would have to try on average (72^6)/2=69657034752 passwords. Assuming you can do 100 tries per second, that would still take more than 8062 days, or more than 22 years on average. Note that I'm being very generous in my assumptions here.
In other words, unless there was another weakness, a brute-force attack was impractical, even without any limit on the number of attempts.
What probably happened was that the passwords were indeed weak. If you know your victim has a dog called 'fido', you can try if she used that name in her password, and in my example you only have to guess two more characters. That only takes seconds or minutes. The attackers may call this brute force, but that's misleading.
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And I was making 1 million trillion billion dollars a year until September 1st as well. Because once something is posted to slashdot, it must be true ... and nothing posted to slashdot never gets thoroughly debunked ... ever ...
Re: please (Score:2)
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A lot of kids browse the website and I have an issue with them having access to many images that in other media contexts such as movies, magazines or television they would be considered illegal. Additionally, some images that are posted by users to /r/gonewild seem to be of under age girls. I wonder why an attorney general somewhere hasn't taken this on. I have been thinking about calling mine.
Reddit needs to clean up its act and require age verification for some subreddits, And stop profiting off illicit pornography and images (like they did with the recent leaked celebrity photographs). Other social media sites can rein it in, so can Reddit.
Stop shirking your responsibilities as a parent. If you feel the need to censor what your children see or hear, then do it. But don't expect the rest of the world to do it for you.